Our View: Back in Iraq

The world can’t catch a break, between Russia, Israel, Syria, etc. If the crisis isn’t man-made, well, it’s Ebola.

On Thursday President Obama authorized military airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops in Iraq, where one of the most ruthless outfits on Earth, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), may be threatening U.S. citizens there, has trapped some 40,000 religious minorities on a mountaintop, and has seized control of the Mosul dam, which provides much of northern Iraq’s electricity and drinking water. Meanwhile, ISIS now controls oil fields, has confiscated artillery this nation supplied to a once-thought-to-be-friendly Iraqi government, made slaves of female prisoners, taken to putting the severed heads of Syrian victims on fence posts, and threatened to regionalize its aggression.

“Today America is coming to help,” said the president. Reluctant and hesitant though understandably many Americans are to intervene yet again in a 21st century of pretty much non-stop bloodshed, we should, and quickly — if there’s anything we’ve learned, the world snoozes, it and innocents lose. But it ought not be just our fight.

Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki is bad news, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad badder still, but ISIS is worse. The U.S. broke Iraq, we own it, we get it. But the world, not just America, has a lot to lose if an Islamic caliphate takes root in this part of the Middle East, threatening to pull in multiple nations along that Sunni-Shiite fault line.